Departure
by The Smell Of Summer
Summary: [Oneshot] As he drove away from the one place he'd ever felt like home, he understood how Ferris felt.


It was dark, cold and it was drizzling. Jess had no idea where he was going. One of his headlights was broken (oh how he hated this beaten up car - but it was the only one he had), so he could barely see. He knew he was headed back to New York, but if you had asked him, he would have had no idea what highway or road he was on.

As he drove away from the only place or, rather, the only person - he'd ever, **ever** felt like he was at home with, he suddenly knew how Ferris Bueller felt when Sloane rejected his proposal.

Ferris's proposal to Sloane, much like Jess's own proposition to Rory, was more than slightly ridiculous, and they both knew that they would be rejected, yet they were completely serious.

Jess had meant every word he said to Rory tonight, and he knew that deep down, she knew he was true too.

Honestly though, he'd never really expected Rory to come away with him. He would've backed out from asking her if he hadn't seen Dean standing there, looking at Rory the way he was. He hated how Dean looked at Rory, as if she were some kind of trophy.

She was no trophy, she was a treasure. Jess knew that, and he had convinced himself that he would never be good enough for her.

He asked, on the one thread of hope she would say yes. He had kind of been hoping that college would change Rory. That it would loosen her up a little bit. Then she wouldn't be Rory though. He didn't think that she was boring - not at all - just that sometimes she really didn't know how to kick back, relax, and have fun. Rory had fun alright, but her idea of fun was studying and smelling books, and watching old movies with no color - not that there was anything wrong with old movies of course, he had watched a few with her and had to admit they were good. Still, Rory didn't know how to have fun like a normal person.

Part of him - most of him, he had to admit, was relieved that Rory hadn't changed. He didn't want her to become like the dumb, party girls in California that he had met.

Jess was only in California for a few months, but while he was there he gained a reputation as a bad boy. The Californian girls had seen bad boys before, sure, but not like Jess. He was the real deal. The true damaged, troubled, angry, bitter, sardonic (and extraordinarily smart) bad boy. Other guys wore leather jackets because they thought they were cool and they wanted to look tough. Not Jess, he'd had his leather jacket since he was eight. It was the one thing he had to hold onto from the father he hadn't known for a majority of his life.

---

_One day an 8 year old Jess came home from school, to find his mother stoned. Of course, she was almost always stoned, but today she was acting different. Liz had just broken up with her boyfriend of 7 months Frank._

_When Jess walked into the apartment he saw his mother sitting at the kitchen table crying and staring at a leather jacket he had never seen before. Looking at the rest of the apartment he could see that she must have found it as she was doing her post-breakup ritual, which included getting (even more) stoned, getting rid of every reminder of the boyfriend, then passing out on the couch after exhausting herself from crying._

_"Mom, what's wrong?"_

_"Oh hey Jessie. I didn't realize you were home from school. Is it that time already?"_

_"Whose leather jacket is that?"_

_"Oh it's Jimmy's."_

_"My...my dad's?" Jess's voice cracked and he tried to sound uninterested._

_"Yeah, hey Jess, will you do me a favor and get rid it?"_

_She dumped the jacket on him, letting him know that he was dismissed to do her bidding, and went to go lay on the couch. _

_Jess meant to get rid of the jacket, but he couldn't. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen and it belonged to his father. The father that he had never met, and had never given him anything, and that Jess should hate, yet he kept the jacket. _

_Once his mother asked him where he got it, and made a remark that it looked familiar, but he just said that he'd found it in a store somewhere._

---

Now Jess had more than a jacket from his father. He had his father's address and a picture of the two of them together (neither one was smiling), and the memory of California.

There was one girl from California that Jess remembered. When he first saw her, he thought she was a cheap imitation of Rory. The same brown hair, the same blue eyes. Only when he looked closer, he eyes weren't like Rory's at all. Sure her eyes were blue, but Rory's eyes sparkled and shined, and got a little mischievous whenever she was teasing him. This girl had eyes that were vacant and empty much like - as he learned later - her head.

After seeing this girl, he couldn't get Rory out of his head. Not that he could before, but this time she was invading his dream. All he would dream about for months was Rory and her eyes, staring at him sadly. (This sparked the idea of his trip to get his car and tell Rory how he felt).

As he now thought of this girl, he could understand why the Beach Boys had wrote a song about the California girls, but they still weren't able to hold a candle to Rory.

The Beach Boys. He thought of that time Lorelai lectured him for not planning things with Rory, for just expecting her to be there.

Everything that Jess thought of came back to Rory. There was nothing he could do to escape her. Rory was everything and everything was Rory. Without her, he had nothing and he kind of liked it like that. Even though he had never been one for dependency he depended on her, because he knew he could. His times with Rory were the happiest memories he had, and he would do anything to hold onto them, to remember that there was a time that he felt so happy and safe and in love. He was living in the past, but he was perfectly content with it. Why not live in the past, when your future doesn't look so great?

He saw a light and everything seemed clear, maybe he was having an epiphany, and he wasn't sure. The next thing he knew though was that everything went black.

---

She woke up the next morning to a newspaper headline that screamed of a tragedy.

**19 Year Old Boy Killed in Car Crash**

She didn't normally like to read articles like that first thing in the morning, but something about it drew to her. Maybe it was because the boy was her age, maybe because the car in the picture looked familiar to her. No matter what the reason was, she picked up the paper and started to read.

_19 year-old Jess Mariano was driving his car late last night, when he was blinded by the light of an oncoming 18 wheeler. Mariano did not know what the light was, and he swerved and hit the 18 wheeler head on._

_The truck driver, after realizing what had happened dialed 9-1-1. An ambulance came and the young boy was rushed to the nearest hospital.  
When reaching the hospital doctors' found that Mariano had a fractured skull, broken wrist, his face was cut up, and he had lost a great deal of blood. He was rushed into surgery, where he stayed for three hours._

_Despite doctors' best attempts, Jess Mariano did not make it through the night. When one of the doctors had asked what had gone wrong with the operation (which was one that they had preformed many times) he shook his head._

_"He could have made it if he really had wanted it, but we could tell that this young boy had no desire to live anymore. No person could get better if they didn't want to. He wanted to die, he didn't want to be in pain, but he didn't want to get better either, so he asked us not to hook him up to anything that would aide in his recovery. It troubled me to think that a boy so young would die tonight of his own wish. "_

_Jess Mariano did not have a cell phone with him, so no family was notified. He was identified by the New York driver's license found in his wallet.  
Before his departure from this world he said one thing. His last words (and request) were, "Tell her I said goodbye."_

Rory put down the paper. She had tears streaming down her face that she didn't even realize were there until her mother came into the kitchen.

"Rory, honey, what's wrong?" Lorelai sat at the table next to her daughter and put her arm around her.

Rory turned to her mother, her blue eyes no longer sparkling and shining. She brushed the tears from her eyes, which had turned icy and hard, and she waited a minute to compose herself before she spoke.

"Jess... he's dead."


End file.
